This reportedly included things like a picture of Kathleen placed on a set of crossbones and a picture of her grandmother in the Grim Reaper’s arms. The grandmother’s neighbor Jennifer Petkov had been responsible for posting these things on Facebook.

FOX 2 in Detroit reports:

Petkov admitted to FOX 2′s Ron Savage that she posted the photos…

Petkov’s cyberbullying drew scrutiny and well-wishes for Kathleen poured in from around the world. Thousands attended a rally in October 2010 to help raise money for the Edward family. Volunteers even treated her to a shopping spree at a local toy store.

The station ran this report about in 2010:

Woman Who Taunted Dying Girl Now Offers Apology: MyFoxDETROIT.com

As a father, I find the whole thing incredibly repulsive, but then again, I also find it repulsive as a human being.

The Huntington’s Disease Society of American Michigan Chapter is accepting donations, as is the Michigan Memorial Funeral Home. Donations can be made in Robert Edwards’ (Kathleen’s father’s) name.

"Bieber is calling on young people to join him by posting an action to stop digital abuse on Draw Your Line, MTV’s virtual map tracking actions taken across the country," Facebook’s Andrew Noyes tells WebProNews. "Each time someone posts an action today through March 31st, they’ll be eligible to enter to win one of several prizes, including a personalized voicemail greeting recorded by Justin Bieber."

The Grand Prize is a trip for two (and backstage passes) to a taping of MTV’s "The Seven" and a personalized voicemail greeting recorded by Bieber himself. There are also three first prizes – just the voicemail recording. Ten second prizes will get 250 Facebook Credits? 

What’s that a plug for Facebook Credits too? Also a smart way for Facebook to get Facebook Credits in front of more eyeballs. They are the future of payments right? Who better to help spread the brand than Bieber? See aforementioned influence. 

In a related story, a new study finds that too many Facebook friends can be quite stressful. 

The new Safety Center now has four times the number of pages focused on safety topics than was previously available.

Facebook worked directly with its Safety Advisory Board on the redesign. The board provided advice on topics to address within the Center, including protections against cyberbullying; how to report a policy violation; and information for educators on using the service.

The Safety Center includes content for parents developed by Common Sense Media, a member of Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board, on topics such as "How do I teach my teen to use the Internet wisely?" and "Can I ‘friend my teen on Facebook?"

"There’s no single answer to making the Internet or Facebook safer," said Elliot Schrage, Vice-President of Global Communications and Public Policy at Facebook. "That’s why we’re introducing new tools and advice for parents, educators and teens."

"We want our approach for improving safety to be as simple, easy and effective as our approach to improving Facebook’s user experience. Our Safety Advisory Board has been a tremendous resource in developing this next generation of safety resources and offering us ideas for new initiatives.  Going forward, you’ll see even more powerful – and simpler – safety innovations coming from Facebook."

Facebook said it used the European Union’s Safer Social Networking Principles, a set of best practices adopted by social networking sites, to shape the new design.

The Facebook Safety Advisory Board consists of five Internet safety organizations. The organizations include Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International, which aims to fight cyberbullying,
 

"Internet bullying has emerged as a new and growing form of social cruelty," Kirk Williams and Nancy Guerra of the University of California wrote in the report. The researchers said that schools and parents need to work together to prevent such behavior without depriving children and teens of Internet access.

The report, from researchers organized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicated a 50 percent increase in the number of kids ages 10 to 17 who said they were harassed online, up from 6 percent in 2000 to 9 percent in 2005.

"Youth harassed online were significantly more likely to also report two or more detentions or suspensions, and skipping school in the previous year," Michele Ybarra and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported in another study in the journal.

Ybarra said that youth who reported experiencing cyber- bullying were eight times more likely than all other youth to carry a weapon to school. They found that 64 percent of those that had been bullied online were not the victims of physical or verbal aggression in person.

"The anonymity provided by new technology limits a victim from responding in a way that may ordinarily stop a peer’s aggressive behavior or influence the probability of future acts, which provides an advantage to the perpetrator," the CDC’s Corinne David-Ferdon and Marci Feldman Hertz wrote.

Complete bans on using the Internet are not likely to work Hertz said. "Technology has a lot of benefits for young people. They can make social connections they otherwise might not have the opportunity to make."

Schools should also become involved and add cyber- bullying to any policies they currently have in place concerning bullying Hertz said. School districts in Florida, South Carolina, Utah and Oregon are developing new policies to address cyber-bullying.

One in 6 teens (15%) said someone had forwarded or posted communication they wanted kept private, while 13 percent said someone had spread a rumor about them online and another 13 percent reported that someone had sent them a threatening or aggressive email, IM or text. Six percent of online teens said that someone had posted an unflattering picture of them without their consent.

The majority of teens, 67 percent said that bullying occurs more offline than online. Girls are more likely than boys to have experienced cyberbullying, 38 percent of online girls said they had been bullied, compared with 26 percent of online boys. Forty-one percent of older teen girls ages 15 to 17 said they had been bullied online.

Teens who use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook and teens that use the Internet daily are more likely to say they have been cyberbullied. Thirty-nine percent of social network users have been cyberbullied in some form, compared with 22 percent of online teens that are not users of social networks.

Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist and author of the report said," Bullying has entered the digital age. The impulses behind it are the same, but the effect is magnified."

"In the past, the materials of bullying would have been whispered, shouted or passed around. Now, with a few clicks, a photo, video or a conversation can be shared with hundreds via email or millions through a website, online profile or blog posting."

This past Monday, we saw one example of cyberbullying in the case of Kathy Sierra – a good synopsis came from Lisa Stone of BlogHer, an organization that has been (possibly / probably unfairly) dragged into the controversy.

Let’s take a step back and get to the basics: this should not have happened. Yes, the blogosphere gives us a sense of anonymity – us in PR have been attacked by an anonymous blog, but none of us have been physically threatened with death (as far as I know), but have had to deal with venomous emails and threats of livelihoods – but it is a false sense, and should not be abused. The truth always comes out, in the end.

And, we have seen the blogosphere get up in arms over gender equality, which has cyberbullied conferences to include women in panels. There is an odd bit of irony there.

We are mostly adults in the blogosphere. Well, "adults" behind a computer giving some people a bigger sense of worth (most likely self-inflated worth, as seems to be the norm in blogs), and there is a lot of testosterone in the blogosphere that comes out in immature ways against women that should not be tolerated.

But, like I noted, we are supposedly adults that should act as adults. In this instance, the adults have lost to the immature and anonymous.

At CommunityNext, I was speaking to three women about bullying and cyberbullying. One of the women is writing her graduate thesis on bullying – both offline and online – and has been spending time in a classroom to research. The other two women work at a childrens’ social network, and we were joking about the bullying of our childhood. My point was that in our school yard days – the more carefree 70′s – that bullying was not necessarily a bad thing, as it hardened us and prepared us for the real world. It was not totally malicious, and while some kids cried, the next day brought the next adventure, and we were all friends. And, well, bullying was always harshest amongst the girls – man, they could get catty. One of the women talked about her experience as a camp counselor, and teasing the children, who valued and sought the interaction from an adult.

But, there is the difference – that was about children. And, children are not equiped to deal with such bullying, and are now being pushed beyond the norm by being cyberbullied on MySpace comments, IM, and text messaged threats. There is no escaping Cyberbullying, as it follows you from device to device – it is the true idea of presence, taken to a horrific level with horrific results. Cyberbullying takes what we did as children, and ramps it up to a whole new level. That "take their cookies" mentality – one that I still subscribe to – is different, as it is not about being tough, but about pushing the other child down in the dirt as much as possible and pushing them over the brink.

What happened is a travesty and embarasing as a male and a long-time blogger. It was an adult-on-adult bullying, but that is the point: we are adults, and should recognize that too big a part of blogging is sandlot bravado. As a PR person, that is part of my counsel to clients: be prepared to defend your line in the sand, and sometimes you need to be prepared to be attacked and defend.

This crossed the line, but are we going to see a backlash where the sentiment is going to be "get a thicker skin"? While that is not the right answer, the blogosphere is fluid, and unfortunately, at times it can be cruel. But, at least we have the hardened years of adulthood, and can sigh a breath of relief that we are not growing up in a world where cyberbullying is the norm.

Comments